


"You're Actually Pretty Hard to Hate"

by spiritofsky



Category: The Amazing World of Gumball
Genre: Break Up, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Relationship Advice, hewwo i had 2 write this, im sorry penny i hope u find a nice gf or somthin, saklks i guess more like penny being like 'if u like rob so much why dont u marry him'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-04 16:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14596809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritofsky/pseuds/spiritofsky
Summary: Penny is fed up of how Gumball tends to ignore her in favour of Rob.





	"You're Actually Pretty Hard to Hate"

**Author's Note:**

> nobody can stop me from writing a ton of gumrob fics i am too powerful  
> i wrote half of this @ my sisters house completley filled w embarrassment so it might uhhhh suck bUT

“Penny! Look!” Gumball hissed under his breath as he instantly, completely dropped the previous conversation without a second thought, eyes narrowing, trained on a single person. Penny looked over, and her expression fell, unnoticed by Gumball.

 

“Rob!” He called out.

 

Rob looked over out of instinct, but in seeing who it was that was calling him, he quickly looked away, shifting nervously.

 

Gumball, however, positively beamed. “See Penny! He can’t even stand to look at me! He hates me so much!”

 

“Yeah...” Penny hesitantly agreed as Gumball started to rattle on about Rob. She gently pushed the cafeteria food around on her plate with her fork.

 

It was a Saturday, and Penny and Gumball had organised a date, so his parents and siblings went for a day out to the park. If only Gumball would actually pay attention to her for more than an hour or so. That never seemed to happen nowadays, it was like Rob was all he could think about.

 

“How about we head back now?” Penny asked, and after a moment of confusion, broken out of his Rob induced trance, Gumball agreed absentmindedly.

 

Gumball then proceeded to ramble about Rob the whole walk back to his house.

 

* * *

 

Sitting in Gumball’s living room that afternoon, it seemed he didn’t feel the tension. Penny decided that she had to _make sure he felt it._

 

“Gumball.” Penny said, “are you sure you… hate him, really? Rob, that is.” She was worrying a loose strand of fabric from the pillow next to her in her hands.

 

Gumball blinked, his ears flicking. “What? Where did that come from? Yeah - of course I do! Why wouldn’t I?”

 

She looked down at her feet, a long, awkward pause as she tried to think of the right words. “You- Well you kind of, act more like you uh, more like you’re... in love with him than hating him.”

 

Eyes widening, Gumball spluttered for an explanation. “Wh- What!? No, no! I don’t- I’m not! I hate him!”

 

Penny made a sort of sigh, “People don’t feel happy when someone they hate is around them or texts them, they don’t want them to talk to them or anything like that, they really don’t get excited… You… are you really sure Gumball? You seem to even… care about him more than me.” Tears were welling in Penny’s eyes, threatening to spill over into what would most likely become an ugly sob and a change of form, but she tried her best to hold her resolve, to be strong and serious and not to cry or transform.

 

“Wh- no Penny I really care about you! I-”

 

Penny gently shook her head. “I’m not saying you don’t care about me or anything Gumball, I can tell you do! You just, seem happier around him - _with him._ I just want what’s best for you, what makes you happiest, y’know? I’d still love to be your friend.”

 

She stood up.

 

“Just, at least think about it, I suppose.”

 

And then Penny left.

 

Gumball decided to head to bed early that night. Darwin didn’t say anything when he came home and saw Gumball just laying awake in his bed, blankly staring at the wall.

 

* * *

  


“Rob!” Gumball called as he spotted him, waving his arms wildly in an effort to get his attention. Watching as Rob jerked to a stop, looking almost nervous as he turned around to look at him, Gumball couldn’t help but think about what Penny had said yesterday. If his face was flushed bright red, (which it very clearly was,) he would be sure to vehemently deny it.

 

“Oh, uh, hey Gumball.” Rob said, his eye firmly trained on the ground, occasionally just barely flicking up to look at him.

 

Eventually, they made eye contact, and they both just stood there, looking at each other. Gumball started to break out in a nervous sweat.

 

Then he just ran away without saying anything.

 

Rob blinked.  


* * *

 

 

Hiding in the bathroom of the shopping centre, Gumball furiously punched Darwin’s number into his phone, not wanting to take the time to trawl through his contact list.

 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” He screamed directly into the phone as Darwin picked up.

 

“What?” Darwin asked, and too embarrassed to explain, Gumball just spluttered before hanging up the phone.

 

Leaving the bathroom, Gumball took a slow, stabilizing breath, and looked around to find Rob. He found him fairly quickly, sitting on a bench. He was fiddling with a hunting knife, and Gumball wasn’t entirely sure it was legal to carry one in public.

 

“Um, hey Rob.” Gumball said, sitting down next to him on the bench.

 

“Oh, uh, hey again Gumball.” Rob replied, looking nervous as he fumbled to put the knife away. Gumball desperately hoped he didn’t plan to stab him. Then again, death _would_ relieve him of his current all consuming embarrassment.

 

“Sorry about… before I just… uhm, remembered something.”

 

“That explains literally nothing and maybe even leaves me with more questions, not entirely sure.”

 

Gumball blinked. “Okay.”

 

Shaking his head with a sigh, Rob leaned back in his seat a little. “What was it you wanted then?”

 

“Uhm...” Gumball didn’t know what to say. If he was being honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to ask in the first place, really. “I dunno. Nothing really, I just wanted to… hang out with you?” His intonation presenting it more as a question than anything.

 

Rob seemed surprised, his eye wide and eyebrow raised. Then, he smiled, and oh God, he think he understood where Penny was coming from because his heart was thrumming rapidly in his chest at the sight and he held his breath in a strange and ultimately vain attempt to stop himself from blushing.

 

“Oh! Sure then, you could’ve just said.” And Gumball jumped up off of the bench to follow Rob out of the shopping centre.

 

“So uh, what did you want to do?” Rob asked hesitantly, fiddling with the bottom hem of his shirt.

 

“I dunno… w-walk around?”

 

“You have no clue do you?” Rob sighed.

 

Gumball looked around nervously, his eyes darting around, wanting to find something to settle on that wasn’t Rob. “I- I just- I’m not used to not fighting with you. I don’t even really know what you like.” And then with wide eyes he let himself look at Rob. “You- You don’t still hate me right? I didn’t misinterpret that-?”

 

Waiting for something less than a second for a response, Gumball quickly cut in with “Oh! I know! We can fight each other for old time’s sake!” And then he slapped Rob in the face.

 

Rob held a hand to his face, the static now flickering faster and more chaotic where he was hit, the crackling sound louder. “You make it really easy for me to want to destroy you, you know.” Gumball beamed and Rob gave him a sidelong look. “Fine, if you want to get beat up that bad.”

 

And then Rob had roughly shoved him to the grass by the side of the pavement, sitting more over him than on him due to their height difference, but on him nonetheless, his hands at his throat and Gumball was painfully reminded of the time they were in the same situation and romantic music was playing.

 

Gumball tried to punch him, but Rob moved his hands away from his throat and used them to pin his arms down to the ground instead. Gumball struggled weakly against his grip, Rob was leaning in close with a gloating, triumphant smile. Gumball’s red face was clearly due to exertion and there was no other possible underlying cause _at all._

 

Letting go of his arms, but still sitting on him, Rob’s smug smile didn’t budge an inch. “I think we can count that as me winning.”

 

So the Gumball used his now free hands to push him over and off of him, sitting up. The smug smile was quickly wiped off of Rob’s face.

 

But then it was replaced with a more genuine smile, and he laughed gently. “Well played.”

 

Gumball didn’t do anything to stop him from sitting up, and they just sat there together in the grass for a short, peaceful moment, unable to catch their breath through their laughter. The mid afternoon sun turning the sky a dusty orange, a gentle breeze cooling them down from the fight.

 

“You really don’t hate me, huh?” Gumball asked after they had both gone silent for a while.

 

Rob sighed at him, but it was a fond sigh, in fact, everything about his expression in that moment seemed fond, from his soft smile to the look in his eye, and then extending even to the tone of his voice as he spoke. “I’ve been over this before Gumball, you’re actually pretty hard to hate...” And then he trailed off, speaking even softer, Gumball didn’t even realise until then how quietly he had been talking. “...You’re actually uh, pretty easy to like.”

 

And then his smile grew a little wider and oh, oh what, oh, he was kissing him, barely, just a chaste press of lips against lips and Gumball’s mind went completely and utterly blank.

 

And then as sudden and unexpected as he kissed him he was sheepishly pulling away, biting his lip. “I’m sorry I shouldn’t- I didn’t ask and- and oh God you have a girlfriend, yeah I’ll- I’ll just, go.”

 

Blinking, still in a daze, Gumball didn’t have the capacity to do or say anything before Rob had hastily walked away, muttering about how he had made another awful mistake and that he should just be left back in the Void to rot.

 

* * *

  


Knocking furiously on Penny’s door so hard he near broke it, Gumball was in a state of delirious panic.

 

Pushing past Penny’s father as he opened the door, Gumball rushed upstairs in a flurry of pawsteps, right into Penny’s room, flinging the door open.

 

“Penny!”

 

Penny looked up from her book in surprise. “Gumball? What’s going on, are you okay?”

 

Taking a second to catch his breath and to close the door, Gumball ran to Penny’s side, and told her in a stage whisper “ _Help me Rob kissed me._ ”

 

It took her a second to respond, staring at Gumball, eventually, she settled on a simple “Oh.”

 

Gumball watched as Penny’s blank expression warped into something akin to shock, and then to sadness, to anger, to confusion, to what looked like… happiness? And then she was back to sadness. He didn’t know what he should do, reduced to just standing there.

 

Penny sighed, tears welling up as she closed her eyes. “Did- did you like it? _Do you like him?_ ”

 

“Uh, maybe? Maybe sort of uh, a lot?”

 

Smiling sadly, Penny waved him off. “Go on then, I want you to be happy.”

 

“Wait are you-?”

 

“It’d be best, Gumball. You seem to hardly think about me anymore, just him.” She turned back to her book, though unable to focus enough to read it.

 

Gumball left before Penny’s dad could realise she was crying and obliterate him.

 

* * *

 

“God, how do you do this… How the hell did I do this with Penny...” Gumball muttered to himself as he went to search for Rob. Sure, he knew for a fact that Rob liked him now but it was still an awkward thing to do.

 

It took a while to find him, considering he didn’t have a house, which was probably something he should do something about, now that he was thinking on it.

 

Eventually, he found him, sitting under a tree and gazing melodramatically off into the distance. Gumball quietly sat down beside him, but Rob didn’t notice until he tapped him on the shoulder.

 

“Gumball!” Rob yelped in surprise, backing up. “I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking-”

 

“It’s fine! I uh, same, me too.”

 

It took Rob a moment to figure out what Gumball was trying to say, and then he smiled with a soft laugh, pulling him into a hug.

 

“I’m glad.” He said before he kissed him again.


End file.
